What makes some designs good and others bad? Why do some designs work while others don’t? Posts in this category offer thoughtful design critiques of modern digital interfaces, with commentary inspired by Don Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things.”
Luma is an event app aimed at connecting people with events in their area. Luma allows users to advertise, create, and explore event listings. For this critique, I will explore the app from the perspective of a user who is looking to create a new event listing. Using theories from The Design of Everyday Things […]
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Radio Garden is a mobile app that lets users listen to live radio stations from around the world through an interactive globe. By tapping different locations, users can explore music, news, and voices tied to real places, encouraging discovery through geography rather than algorithms or playlists
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Chrono24 is an online marketplace for luxury watches. It hosts buyers, professional dealers and private sellers across the world, and showcases new, used and vintage products. For the purpose of this critique, I will be considering the user as a potential customer with average technology experience who may use the app to find watches they
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Nibble is a microlearning app offering short, interactive lessons across topics ranging from math to art, designed to help users learn more in manageable, bite-sized sessions. This critique examines the journey of a young, full-time professional with limited free time who uses Nibble to replace doomscrolling with meaningful learning. Drawing on Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things and Jenny Davis’s How Artifacts Afford, this analysis explores how the app’s design enables the user’s goal of building a daily learning habit within a hectic routine.
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Strava is a performance centered fitness tracking app that transforms physical activity into measurable data rather than only recording workouts, it structures exercise around metrics, competition and visible improvement charts. For runners and cyclists who are motivated by progress tracking, personal records and social comparison this app provides a clear system for documenting effort and
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WEBTOON is a mobile-first serialized comic platform built around vertical scrolling storytelling. Its original conceptual model resembled a digital library of episodic stories updated weekly. Today, the system image presented to users is far more complex. It blends characteristics of: a streaming platform (ranks, trending), a social media feed (comments, algorithmic recommendations), a freemium game
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Endel is an AI-powered sound wellness app that creates generative soundscapes designed to help users focus, relax, and sleep. Unlike a static playlist, Endel’s “Endel Pacific” engine blends music in real-time, aiming to make the audio endless and never repeats exactly. Using Don Normans, Design of Every Day Things and chapters of How Artifacts Affords, this critique aims to explore how Endel’s design guides and confuses the users in their quest to focus.
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Introduction The WeTransfer app has one main goal for all its users: “Send Large Files Fast.” I believe that it is because of this sole promise that the user interface people are presented with is very minimal. Users of this app are only here for one reason, so the app is designed in a way
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Are.na is a visual bookmarking and knowledge-curation platform that lets users collect images, links, text, and files into organized “channels.” It’s built for researchers, creatives, and thinkers who want a distraction-free alternative to Pinterest or Notion — without ads, algorithms, or social noise. Meet Maya Maya is a 26-year-old graduate student in landscape architecture. She
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Citymapper is a mobile navigation app which helps users navigate across a city using public transportation, walking, cycling all the other travel modes that the city has to offer. It combines real-time transit data, accessibility-aware routing and advance trip planning features. The app reduces uncertainty and cognitive effort for the user in their navigation.
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